Means to an End
by disposablehero
Summary: Canon starting at 9x18, spoilers through 9. Cas helps Dean deal with the dangerous urges caused by the Mark of Cain. What starts off as angsty, violent sex gradually becomes healing fluff (it's getting there). Warnings: sex work/dub!con in Dean's past, bite!kink, top!Cas, masturbation, phone sex, sexualized violence, bondage.
1. Chapter 1

I.

Castiel knew what the disgusting weal on Dean's right arm was. Brand of darkness. Scar of the first slaughter. The Mark of Cain. Dean had wanted him to see it, had purposely brought that filthy sigil close to his _face._ Rigid with fury, he glared.

Dean watched him carefully. Cas could crush his arm, and right now he wanted to make a point. Cautious respect flashed in his eyes as Cas gripped that branded arm tight enough to cause pain.

"What have you done?" Castiel growled.

Dean's eyes broke like window panes, and through the cracks, terror screamed. Then he whipped his arm loose and pulled down his sleeve. "It's a means to an end," he mumbled to the pavement.

"Damn it, Dean..." Castiel screwed his gaze into the man. That end he spoke of? It was his own. Dean's lust for martyrdom overwhelmed both will and brain. Cas knew that about him. But this was the worst possible moment to learn he'd set in motion yet another plan for self-immolation.

The parting glance Dean flicked him over the roof of the Impala was hot with fear.

X

Castiel, only vaguely aware, reentered his motel room. He had the curious sensation of time stretching like soft taffy to accomodate the speed of his racing thoughts.

Because of the Fall, he was no longer connected to the power of Heaven. He could not enter dreams. Without his wings, he couldn't even watch over Dean. That meant he had no way to monitor the progression of Dean's inevitable disintegration.

Even with those limitations, being an angel was still better than being human. Not that he'd hated "Steve"—he'd learned so much about the simple dignity of honest work, the poignancy edging every human emotion, so ephemeral, so violent. But Dean had treated Steve like a cute kid brother. Did all but pinch his cheek.

Castiel had swiftly realized that so long as he remained human, Dean's pain was off-limits. That meant Dean was off-limits, because he, as Steve, was just one more person to protect. Just another stone in a drowning man's pocket.

Well, he had grace again. Once again, he was strong enough to lift the Righteous Man, and the Righteous Man responded. All well and good—except the grace he'd stolen was temporary. Dean's willingness to make himself vulnerable to him, then, was also temporary.

Cas stared blindly at the wall, papered by maps. He couldn't let himself be distracted by thoughts of Dean now. He had to consider the matter of Metatron.

They'd met. The Scribe's proposal: that Castiel serve as a puppet leader for those angels who currently found him... unpalatable. Once Castiel gained the rebels' trust, he would, at the proper time, betray his army to Metatron. The Scribe surmised the naturally submissive angels would follow him without a fight. Once he gained the throne of Heaven, he would reward Cas with a source of ever-renewing grace. Or, even better, he would return what little remained of his own.

At the time, Castiel had not even considered it. Regardless of his personal opinion of the angels' willpower, he'd never forgotten the disaster he'd made of his previous attempt to lead. He'd decimated the angelic host, and worse, murdered humans by the score. Now that Dean had gone and branded his arm, however, the idea of leadership not only had merit, but urgency. He didn't mean to take Metatron's deal, of course—he'd _never_ betray his people—but, if he stayed in the fight, he knew he'd find a way to make the Scribe cough up that grace. Even if it wasn't his own, he would take _anything_ he could get to save Dean.

Every sentient being's greatest strength was also its greatest weakness. In Castiel, that double-edged sword was his determination to keep going until every option was exhausted. So what happened next couldn't even be called a decision, because really, he never had a choice. To save Dean, he had to save the angels.

Time snapped back into its normal flow. Cas surged and tore the maps from the wall. The angel blade bit his inner arm, bisecting flesh and vein. Holy light sang from the lips of the wound as his vessel's blood drained into the collecting bowl, its scent mixed with angel energy, floral and cloyingly sweet.

Like everything else on God's green earth, the knife's edge, the pain, the smell of blood, made him think of Dean. Dean didn't mind the knife. Though he'd never turned cutting into a hobby, he also never flinched from the pain. It was something he could trust, something he could control. A distraction from life's more abstract torments. He had other methods when things got bad—more effective, perhaps, but less palatable.

For his part, Cas wished Dean would ladder himself with cuts, rather than seek out... those strangers.

Back when he'd first met Dean, before the hunter taught him about privacy, he used to watch over these encounters. Still more light than man, all he could do was tip his head in wonder at the sight of Dean, grunting and sweating, the crown of his skull pounding against a car door or his cheek barking on bricks as the stranger behind him plunged and reared. The congress was always rough. Dean always bruised, tore, bled. The only saving grace was he didn't seek it often. Not nightly, not weekly, not even once a month, but whenever things got bad, as they always did... as they were _now..._ he sought himself a stranger.

The Castiel made of light wanted to understand what _purpose_ this activity was meant to serve. It was obviously not procreative, and Dean seemed to derive no enjoyment from it. So, cold as a scientist, he studied Dean's past. With Heaven's power, he moved back in time and watched boy Dean, out of money, his little brother sick or hungry, first agonize and snarl over the necessity and then, once it had become just another means to an end, shrug into his coat and say, "Go to sleep, Sammy, and I'll be back with some food."

Even as innocent as Castiel used to be, no one had to tell him that Dean was far too young. His johns were predators, men who fantasized about fouling something pure. They were not kind.

But boy Dean had done what he had to do, and Sammy thrived. As for why he sought the same out now...

The bowl brimmed with blood. With sure gestures, Castiel painted the Horn of Gabriel on the motel wall.

Dean couldn't have known, when he took that Mark, that he would one day become the demon he'd always feared he'd be. On that day, freed from pain at last, with no need of Castiel, no responsibility for Sam, he would cavort in a Paradise of death instead of flowers. Without his free will. Unless Cas stopped it.

The Horn began its pure, summoning tone.

II.

"Keep an eye on him," he'd heard Cas order Sam.

Dean stared inflexibly at the road unspooling in the Impala's headlights. God damn that interfering sonuvabitch anyway. Sam, riding shotgun, kept _feeling_ at him, like that big brain of his had sprouted tentacles tapping at Dean's temples, begging him to open up. Fat chance.

A couple years ago, after Cas donned the loonyform and buzzed off to bliss on bees, Sammy had sat there in the hideout cabin, doing that same telepathic tapping thing. Sorry, Cas had said before he left, all simple and radiant like a toddler. Yeah, he'd gone batshit crazy, and he _was_ SORRY!

Leaving Dean alone with Sam, who, with his shiny new mind, decided it was time to talk out every painful thing that had ever happened to them, like hey, we're already bleeding, let's lance the abscesses in our souls and be rendered clean by the fire of our despair.

Brilliant, Sam. Dean wanted nothing to do with such a project. If he started sawing through the membranes of those walled-off old hurts, the amount of pus released would drown them both. The only purification he needed came inside a whiskey bottle.

But Sam, much like his old buddy Lucy, just. Would not. Shut up.

"You told me about... what happened to you in Hell. When you were ready."

Dean slugged some whiskey. He wasn't there yet. Once his lips went numb, he could start in on the serious drinking.

"You listening?"

"Yeah," Dean said. He swallowed the liquor.

Dammit. Sam always was one to talk it out, but Dean didn't know if he could bear to hear it. What his brother went through in the Pit. What he, in spite of everything, had been unable to save him from.

Sam shifted noisily in his chair, swinging his shoulders away from his laptop where he was doing research on who the fuck cared, but Dean kept his eyes on the level of liquor in his bottle. There was enough. If there wasn't, he'd made sure to pick up a few cases of beer on his last run into town. He'd be fine.

"Remember that time you were gone two months? Dad said you got lost on a hunt?" Sam asked.

Actually, he'd been in a boy's home. A john rolled him for the seed money Dad had left them to live on. Dogged by the thought of returning to Sammy empty-handed, Dean tried to swipe some food. He probably would've stepped on the shoplifting charge since the motive was so obvious and so pathetic, but the clerk had a bug up his ass about the underage cowboy working the pavement outside his store. Dean never forgot what he'd said to the deputy: "Lock that little faggot up and put the fear of God in him." Dad said something similar when he'd left him to serve his time. He didn't blame the man. He'd deserved it.

Sam, talking. "Lucifer, he told me. Wanted to make me feel stupid, I guess, show how honest he was in comparison. He told me where you'd really been." Sam paused for drama before he brought the hammer down. "He, uh, told me how you got there."

Dean considered just. Not responding. After a sip from the bottle he said, "Easier on the karma than mugging and quicker than a con. Kept you in Jujubees, Sammy."

"Dean. You don't have to explain anything to me. I know why you did. How it felt? I... learned." Words failed him then, which was just fine, because his voice had started to see-saw like he was having trouble keeping control, and that was not something Dean could midwife him through. Not at all.

Whiskey sloshed into a glass. Dean muttered, "Wish I coulda killed him for you."

Inside, the cut Sam inflicted bled: I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I shoulda kept faith. I shoulda _never_ walked away from you. What the Devil did to you in the cage? That's on me. One more on me.

"That goes without saying," Sam said in unwitting reply to Dean's brooding thoughts. "I just wanted you to know. That I... I know. I understand."

"And I never, ever wanted you to understand a goddamned thing." Dean shot the glass in a gulp.

Now, Dean swallowed to drown out the low, murderous hum of the Mark, resisting the urge to plow his fist into his brother's face and close those anxious puppy eyes with bruises.

Cos, sure. Sure, Sam totally understood. Years of Satan reaming out his ass, because that's what happened to you in Hell. Not much gray area there, but Dean? Hell, he'd sold his! Different things, baby bro. He'd _trolled_ for it, invited it, played up to the ones who wanted him to like it, acting that maybe-sorta-kinda edged into truth sometimes, if the guy smelled right, moved right.

Which, while confusing enough, wasn't even a touch on whatever supernatural-beastie hard-on he had going for Cas, if that even belonged in the same category. Wasn't a man, wasn't a woman, wasn't a _human_ , and apparently that moved his furniture in a big way because it took him years to stop staring at the dude's lips. So what did that make him? Did Tumblr have a hashtag for what he was?

Dean tried to make himself feel better. It's not like he sweated it all the freaking time. He figured he was straight. Straightish. Straight _enough._ When "fun" was what he had in mind, he found himself a woman.

But every once in awhile, even though he really had no reason and no excuse, he _still_ trolled. Told himself, quick money. Sought out the mean ones, their mangy hides tattooed with pictographs of all their sins, demons without the smoke. Humped for them like a bitch dog, made sure they hurt him. Didn't pray to Cas, at least not that he knew of, but afterwards, lying there in the dark or huddled up in an alley, sore, burning, wetness in his boxers he refused to think about, he'd feel the angel's touch on his brow, cool and fleeting like a kiss, and it would take away the pain.

Sometimes he hated him for that mercy.

Fuck Tumblr. Not even the lore had a name for the kind of monster that made him.

He beat the steering wheel, shaking off pins-and-needles from the Mark, which pinched him like a crab whenever he needed a distraction from his thoughts. Distantly it occurred to him that he could get to like the damned thing. It seemed to be on his side, if nothing else.

Too soon, they were pulling into the latest parking space at the latest motel.


	2. Chapter 2

III.

Dean snapped awake in the sweating dark, his arm on fire from the elbow down, his blood-soaked wet dreams carrying over to reality so it seemed the darkness around him was populated by shadowy victims, all waiting with sepulchral grace for him to do the honors. It took all he had to contain his twitch so it didn't turn into a scything swing, separating heads from necks at a stroke.

What a fucking nightmare. What a fucking _all_ the nightmares. Torturing in Hell pulsed into 24/7 surround-sound murder in Purgatory and back again. His cock was as hard as a railroad spike, pulsing with blood and heat and he was so frustrated, so horrified by his overt sexual delight in the carnage, he thought he'd scream.

Castiel used to be able to walk into his dreams and smooth them out. Not that he'd ever thanked him. "What am I, three years old? You gonna sing me lullabies? You wanna snag me an Oscar the Grouch night-light while you're at it?" Cas, of course, didn't understand that reference, and once Dean put a toe into the explanation and then waved off the follow-through, they'd reached the agreement that Cas wasn't supposed to step into his dreams. Not that that ever stopped him. Cas sucked at following orders he didn't agree with.

God. The last thing he needed was to think about Cas. Cas was still furious about the Mark. It wasn't often Dean found himself on the wrong side of his angel's grace, and he was surprised by how much he hated it.

He scrubbed his face and checked on Sam, a habit of such long standing he didn't even think about it anymore. Sam slept peacefully. Lucky bastard. Wish an angel would swab out my submarine, he thought sourly. All those times Cas buffed his paintjob, and he never even thought to offer. Truth be told, if he ever had, Dean would have told him to shove it straight up his rosebud, so there was that.

He glanced out the window across the neon-stained parking lot, pretending like he was just checking the perimeter, knowing what he was really looking for, but there was nobody there—no trucks, no loose-kneed drunks, no lonely night travelers flickering home on one headlight.

They were far enough out in the boonies that the clear night sky looked almost purple, shattered by stars. Suddenly, he was seized by a desire to be outside. Take a walk. It looked quiet out there. Knowing his luck, the only three vamps in the state would find him and fang out on his ass, but that'd be fine, too. He tucked his gun into his waistband and put a knife in his back pocket, just in case.

He closed the door quietly behind him, only releasing the knob when the latch could set silently in its slot. Locking it was louder, though it wasn't a great concern. Sammy always slept like the dead. Even if he slept like a feather, keeping the door unlocked was simply not an option. He pocketed the key and turned around.

Castiel.

The angel's presence jolted through him, making his heart pound.

"Did I come at a bad time?" Cas asked, giving him a look which said it had better not be.

Dean looked down, shuffled his feet. Guilty, his posture said. Aloud, he said, "Walls're closin' in... What are you doin' here, Cas?"

Because this wasn't the old days, Cas whisking in and out on his wings like a thought. Now Dean became aware of the tick of a car engine cooling, the smell of combustion as distinctive as the sulfur of a demon's passage. The door slam when Cas got out had probably awoken him from his nightmare.

"I was not far from your location," Cas said, following his glance over his shoulder to the Cadillac. "I... sensed... you needed me."

"It's not like I prayed," Dean said, and hated himself for it when Cas flinched.

He recovered quick though, he'd give him that. "I know," he said.

Oh, right, Cas was an angel again. He had the privilege of being gentle when Dean hurt him. Not like "Steve," spitting like a kitten inside that lurid plastic gas station. The memory still made him smile. Cas, so ridiculously proud of himself, and so _little,_ with none of the awesome power that turned his small-boned body into something as cool and deadly as an angel blade. Like now.

Cas stepped into his space. Dean didn't give any ground—he never gave ground—but he was aware of the door at his back. This should be bad. No escape routes, and he hated for a man to stand in front of him with his back to the wall. But this was okay. For some reason.

"I know what you're looking for," Cas said.

Now, that was not okay.

Dean squinted and sneered, "Really? 'Bout tell me what I'm gonna go order at Taco Bell?"

Cas bored into him with blue eyes seared white by reflected neon and Dean cleared his throat. He felt the angel's warmth through both their shirts, smelled his scent, salt and woodchips like a human man. An angel fragrance hung around him, too, something floral. It made him crazy that he could never put his finger on the name of the flower.

"This is not the best time to lie to me, Dean." Cas grabbed Dean's arm again, as he had before, his grip iron. Dean knew he wouldn't be able to break it until Cas _let_ him break it. Cas's gaze, as hard as his grip, held him as he pressed in closer.

"Ordinarily," Cas said, twisting his face up to his, lips tight, "I would not interfere. But now you bear the Mark of Cain. Your regular form of 'stress relief' is no longer safe for your potential partners."

"Cas, wanna clue me in on what the hell you're talking about?" Dean half-laughed, half-gasped, in one last desperate attempt to dissemble.

Cas's eyes narrowed, and maybe lying after he'd been explicitly told not to was not the best idea. The angel tightened his grip until the bones in his arm ground together.

"Hit me," Cas rasped.

In answer, Dean's free arm came up, the knife in his hand reflecting pink-blue neon, and Cas, in a motion so quick he did not see it, disarmed him.

"You probably didn't plan that," Cas said thoughtfully. "Your knife," he added, handing it back.

True, knifing Cas was not his top priority. Somewhat stunned, Dean accepted his weapon and slipped it back in his pocket.

"The Mark acts in its own interest. Surely you've noticed. Your reflexes, your strength, your defense—they're all better than they've ever been. The bottom feeders you tend to pick up would set it off for certain."

What was that tone in his voice? It was Dean's turn to narrow his eyes and pierce Cas with his gaze. "Bottom feeders?" he scoffed. Then he shrugged. "I mean, it's fair. Just sounds weird, comin' from you."

"That 'weird tone' you hear in my voice, Dean, is _confusion,_ "and now Cas really did sound pissed. He pressed Dean against the door, hard from collarbone to knee.

"Almost four billion men on this planet you could use," the angel snarled, "and you select the _worst,_ the _least_ worthy, and you make them _defile_ you."

Dean smirked. "This church in Kansas, man, it's made for you. You should probably check it out."

Cas released him. Dean sagged against the door as the angel spun away, cradling his bruised wrist in his hand. A glance showed the red marks of the angel's fingers layered over the older marks from before, already turning purple.

"You think I mean _that._ " Cas's trench coat settled around him with a sound like wings furling.

Dean was, all the sudden, furious. "What 'that,' Cas? 'That' transmission? 'That' coffeemaker? What?'"

He shoved off the door, used the impetus to put power into a swing at the angel. It was pointless: Cas simply caught his arm, as Dean had known he would.

He pressed his point anyway, brought his face close to Cas's and roared. "What's the matter, Cas? Too pure? _Say_ it, you sonuvabitch!"

Cas took a deep breath with his eyes closed. When he opened them, Dean was struck by their deep blue calm.

With a trace of irony in his voice, he said, "Anal sex, Dean. About which I do not care. What I do care about is you, inciting the worst filth you can find," Cas was not completely successful at keeping the anger out of his voice that time, but he went on steadily enough, "to hurt you. That was what I meant by defilement."

Dean made a move to free his arm and Cas immediately let him go. He scratched his head. "So, uh, you knew this whole time?"

"It didn't seem worthy of comment." Cas swept his patented lost-horizons stare along the silhouettes of the pine trees biting up at the stars.

"Maybe we should move this party," Dean said, hooking a thumb at the door. "Sam. Sleeping."

Cas shrugged. "I'd be surprised if we haven't woke him with all the noise we made."

"He's pretending, Cas," Dean said in exasperation. "That's what humans do when Mommy and Daddy fight. Come on."


	3. Chapter 3

IV.

Cas followed Dean up the hill behind the motel. Screened by fragrant pines, it crested in a grassy knoll with granite bedrock knobbing through the earth. One of the stones, flat, relatively free of pine needles, probably saw regular use as a picnic table. Dean, who didn't care what kind of regular use it got, stretched his long length out on it as though thinking of getting tan off the starlight. The night was clear enough that Cas thought he might succeed.

He lie down on the stone beside him, listening to the thump of the hunter's heart. It was going too fast, considering Dean was just lying there. The heavens unscrolled with stars in their infinite profusion, no moon to drown them out.

"So, Purgatory," Dean said, in a too-hearty "let's air it out" tone.

"Benny." Cas sighed. "I suspected." He picked out a particular star to focus on, because he so didn't want to talk about Benny. "He was upset when I joined you. Something stopped happening. Something he missed."

Dean scoffed. "Yeah it stopped, cos I didn't want you to know. Wouldn't have happened in the first place, but, you know, time was all fucked, and every tree looked the same..."

"You needed him to help you remember your humanity," Cas said. Taking a risk, he added, "He was kind to you, though he hurt. I thought perhaps you would continue if I were gone."

"Is that why you stayed?" Anger rumbled through Dean's voice. Castiel wanted to look at him, but he sensed Dean felt safer talking with the stars in his face. "You thought, what? Out of sight, out of mind, Cas?"

"You've already yelled at me about this," Cas said, "and I've already explained myself to you. Strangely enough, not everything is about you." He smiled to neutralize the acidity of his words and said, once he felt the hunter's coiled body beside his relax, "Benny didn't fit your usual profile. You can't blame me for thinking you'd found something worth keeping."

"Nah. What happens in Purgatory, stays in Purgatory."

Dean intoned this like a familiar mantra, but it didn't mean anything to Castiel.

"Why did you keep these things from me, Dean?"

"A man wants some privacy now and then."

"Humans use privacy to conceal that which is shameful," Cas said, focusing harder on his chosen star to keep from looking at Dean. "The pity is that so much of what they find shameful is also necessary."

"I don't find a damn thing we've been talking about 'necessary,' Cas, so you can just delete that right out of your databank."

"You find _punishment_ necessary." Staring at the star didn't work. Cas found himself glaring at Dean's profile.

Dean swallowed. "Got enough of that," he said.

"Apparently not." Cas made an effort to control his temper. "We're back where we started. You need something you can't have, so what now?"

"Cas, how 'bout you do me a favor and knock off the euphemisms. What is it, exactly, you think I need?"

The taunt in Dean's voice caught Cas's attention as surely as his glare. Dean had given up his search for truth in the stars and was snarling in his face. Again.

They moved at the same time, Dean bringing up his branded arm to strike and Castiel just as swiftly blocking, shoving Dean's arm back to the stone, his body slanting across the hunter's. He threw his leg over Dean's thighs to keep him from kicking and made himself heavy so Dean couldn't throw him off. Physically, he was smaller and lighter than the other man, but his grace made him stronger, and Dean knew it.

Cas felt the heat and the hardness of Dean's body against his, just as he had when he'd pressed him against the motel door, and he responded to it, as always. Years of being too aware of Dean's proximity, the special skin-pricking feel of the space near him, his smell (Dean would rather wear a week's unwashed funk than tolerate an anemic shower, not that Castiel ever minded), of his gaze lingering on his lips, and now, the certain knowledge that Dean needed him. It wouldn't be the way Castiel wanted, exactly, because Dean needed to be hurt, but at least Cas could hurt him, as ironic as the sentence sounded even in his head, safely.

Dean made to head-butt him and Cas popped him in the nose, knocking his head against the rock. As it rebounded, he sealed Dean's mouth with his.

Dean's response was eager enough to dispel the last of Castiel's misgivings. Kissing April had been one thing, but this was another, hard where she'd been soft, aggressive where she'd yielded. Dean's tongue, thick and muscular, hot and male, drove into his mouth and lust, still new to him, burned him with its fire. He bore down hard enough to cut the flesh of Dean's lips against his teeth, lacing his saliva with blood-salt, and Dean surged beneath him with a strangely vulnerable whimper. In any other context, Cas would have drawn back immediately to see where he was injured, but he intuited what this meant, for once, and didn't stop.

Until Dean socked him in the jaw, knocking his face off his.

Cas froze until he saw the glassy, feral shine in Dean's eyes. Belatedly, he remembered fighting was part of this.

He hardened his gaze, caught Dean's fist when he drew back to strike again, slammed it to the rock and then grabbed Dean's other hand, wrapped them both up as best he could in one fist and forced the hunter's hands up over his head. After a struggle, he succeded in wrapping his legs around Dean's, his hips driven hard against Dean's hips, his breath sawing at the pulse of Dean's total erection against his. That was new, and for a moment, Cas was confused. Dean never got more than semi-engorged with other men, at least not without a lot of stimulation and his eyes screwed shut.

The certain knowledge smote him: Dean wanted _him._ Cas sucked in a ragged breath, striving to keep his joy and his triumph off his face.

With his free hand, he rummaged at Dean's waistband, ignoring the way Dean's hips twisted in a silent plea, ignoring also the proud flesh beneath the zipper even as his near hand felt its radiant heat. Dean gasped when his hand closed on the butt of the pistol. He pulled it out and set it aside. Then he groped for the knife and set that aside, as well.

It was more symbolic than anything, disarming him, but it would have been more powerful if he'd made him give the weapons up. The thought, the image, of Dean Winchester willingly handing over his gun and his knives sent such a cramp of desire through him that he dipped his head with a hollow moan.

"Cas?" Concern in Dean's strained voice.

"Shut up," Cas said, his voice strained too, but flinty. "Worry about yourself."

And that was what this was all about, wasn't it? The realization relaxed something inside Cas he hadn't known was tense. The world perched like a bald-headed carrion bird on Dean Winchester's shoulder. Dean responded best to Cas when he was empowered because Cas represented relief from that responsibility—someone strong enough to share his burden. Someone who could take control and be effective in those rare moments when he couldn't.

Cas never wanted to hurt Dean. He wanted to love him. He wanted—and this was darkest blasphemy, but he was already exiled from Heaven, so what of it?—to worship him. But until he convinced Dean to allow it, Cas could at least play the role offered and give him a space where he had no responsibility, and no other choice.

It struck him all of a sudden. He was being offered the chance to please Dean Winchester, and here he'd been, moping about how he'd thrown all the angels out of Heaven. Pfft.

"The hell's so funny?" Dean jack-knifed beneath him, managed to get one arm free, and drilled his nose. In response, Castiel lifted Dean by his shirt and slammed him, knocking him breathless and whacking his head against the rock again with an ugly sound. While he made sure his concern at the crack didn't show, Dean had sustained too many concussions for Cas not to let a wisp of healing energy resolve the bruise on his brain before it formed.

"You are. Thinking you can fight me," Cas said coldly. He snatched Dean's hands, pressing them to either side of his body. "You're just a man."

Dean scowled when Cas deliberately invoked the last time he'd tried to make him do something he didn't want to do. His big, hard body writhed, but Cas had a good grip this time and he wasn't able to wrest free.

Cas bent to him and kissed him, forced his mouth open, pushed his tongue in. The wet heat lit his mind with stars, and for awhile, he got lost in it, the taste, the sensations. Dean noticed, worked his angle, and while Cas was distracted, pulled a hand loose.


	4. Chapter 4

V.

Sonuvabitch wasn't ever gonna let him unzip, apparently. That wasn't gonna, pardon the pun, fly.

Sense returned to the angel, but it was too late; Dean had managed to pop the button on his jeans and work his fly down and God, thank God, his eyes rolled back in his head at the sensation of his bare cock touching the fabric of Cas's slacks, probably leaving a little wet mark there to dry tattle-tale white. Good.

He still hadn't quite caught up to himself and he hoped that state of affairs would continue. He could sink in a quagmire of confusion and self-loathing later, and anyway, the hell was his problem? He'd already gone to Hell, and, no doubt, he'd be going there again. This felt good—scratch that, it felt awesome. As much as he wanted to tell himself this scene was just more of the same, he knew he'd be lying. His cock told the truth. His craving for the taste of Cas's mouth, sweet and clean like filtered water, told the truth.

As Cas bent his hand back painfully with a guttural admonition to be good, he ground against him.

Castiel's expression hardened. Then he plowed his elbow into Dean's solar plexus.

Dean wanted to curl up to ease the sick feeling, but Cas kept him spread, and the moment he sucked breath, Cas hammered him again.

In full-on Angel of the Lord mode, Castiel growled, "Did you not understand me the first time?"

He drove his knees into Dean's legs hard enough to cause bruises. His hipbones became punishing. Somehow, that little dude made himself weigh a ton.

The Mark of Cain whined. With its strength, Dean threw Cas across the clearing.

Cas's body raked a divot in the grass. He came to rest on one knee, his eyes steady and calculating, and launched himself.

Fury banged through Dean's veins, harder than any drug. He met Cas's drive and rammed his elbow into the angel's chin, snapping his head back with a force that would have broken the neck of a man, but only stunned the angel. He recovered impossibly fast, hooked his foot behind Dean's knee and yanked. Dean went down. He rolled to avoid being pinned and only then realized his pants were sagging.

Holding them up, he bounced to his feet.

Castiel stared at him with a flat menace that made Dean strangle on a laugh: _Cas, not for nothing, but the last time somebody looked at me like that, I got laid._

"That's what happens when you don't obey." On the final word, he stepped forward with a punch that busted open Dean's cheekbone and put him on the ground again.

This time Cas jumped on his back like a mountain lion. In a few quick motions, he had Dean's hands restrained and his jeans pulled down. He was dimly aware of some fantastic contortion taking place above him, and then he felt—teeth.

It took a second to sink in. Cas bit him. On the ass. Not lightly, either. This was no joke-y love bite, but a vampire's stepsibling. It broke his skin and drew his blood and the Mark said nothing about it whatosever. Probably cos—and he was just spit-balling, here—the bolt of novel sensation turned his dick into a struck tuning fork, singing a pure tone that melted his brains.

Another contortion behind him. He didn't think Cas was aware of the little sounds he was making, eager high-pitched moans mixed with lower growls. His shirt tore. Cas bit his shoulders and down his spine, not breaking his skin but hard enough to serve as punctuation. All the while, he thrust against him until Dean could hardly expand his lungs to breathe, let alone move.

The Mark was silent. He looked for fury, didn't find it. Instead, his body rang with a sweet ache that sapped his strength. He... relaxed.

Above him, Castiel trembled like a man in DTs. His hands on Dean's wrists shook.

A rumble in his ear: "I won't enter you without your consent." The small nips, the hot breath, the rough lips along the stiff edge of Dean's ear made him twist his face to the ground and hump the turf.

"Say yes," Cas said, nipping down his neck. His breath swept over his skin, hot and fast, carrying the scent of that flower Dean could not name. " _Say yes_ ," he urged thickly.

Dean waged a brief but intense internal battle. In a moment of clarity, he saw himself, rutting beneath his best friend, an entity he'd called brother, both of them bloody and bruised with the starlight gleaming off their edges. He also saw, though he couldn't possibly, Castiel's face, torn by hope and close to panic.

If he said "no," this would all be over. Cas wouldn't walk away, because Cas would never walk away, but this was a one-time shot. For all he'd manipulated Cas into this, the angel was now more vulnerable than he was.

Dean said, "Yes."

X

From what Cas had previously observed, his penetration of Dean should not have gone as smoothly as it did. Granted, he was well-slicked with his own juices, spread around when he pulled down his pants, unable to keep his hands off himself.

He went slowly, feeling Dean's muscles clench and then relax, pressing forward when he could, not forcing it. Dean tried to speed him along, wriggling back, impaling himself, but Cas put a stop to that with a firm hand on his back. Once he was hilted, he stopped, shuddering, panting, wracked with sensations so intense they might well prove lethal, his skin flashing hot and cold like a fever.

He'd liked sex when he tried it with April. Her wetness, her scent, the way she alternately gripped and flowed, had put him in mind of music, poetry, the primordial ocean.

This bore absolutely no resemblance to that. This was waging victorious war in Heaven, that same leap of power and the second wind that came when the battle required one last, ultimate exertion. He wanted to throw his head back and howl, but instead he began to move, to pump, inside Dean.

X

Dean growled and clawed the earth, no longer requiring Cas's hands on his to keep him still. Cas settled back on his heels and casually hauled Dean up to meet him. Cas had been holding back. Soft-handing his ass like he was made of china. Hell, he'd probably held back from the very first. His strength could put him in orbit if the angel ever saw fit to unleash it.

Well, that was fine, just fine, cos with the Mark, Dean could sock Cas all the way down to Hell itself.

Cas's cock was a long, thick shaft of pain inside him, mixed with pleasure, and the pleasure was growing as the angel hit his stride. Pain-pleasure-pain, the pleasure a coal catching flame in the pit of his stomach, the pain peaking, lapsing, searing, each white-hot flare necessary, loved.

He cursed fluently, low, choked, indiscriminately mixing praise and maledictions. His cock aching, rigid, cried for attention. He reached for it but Cas was already there, untutored hand stammering through what had to be the world's worst handjob. Dean, amused, thought he couldn't possibly have ever jerked himself off. He decided, for his own sanity, not to think of how horny it made him to see Cas's fingers stumbling over and around the head of his cock.

And. While the handjob was, no doubt, a junior prom grope if ever there was one, Cas found the sweet spot inside him and was working it with short, curving thrusts.

The angel made a helpless sound, so lost in pleasure it nearly turned Dean over. This awesome celestial being was wrecked, for _him_ , because of _him_. He made Cas feel good, and nobody even had to die.

He flexed, gripped, pulled all his tricks to wring more of those creeling moans from Cas, who leapt inside him, stretching him with a sudden pain so surprising he choked and coughed.

All that spinning, sawing, rocking energy, spiralling higher, winding tighter, tighter still, until.

X

Explosion, reintegration. Cas would have thought he'd been smote and resurrected yet again, except for the spastic twitching of his penis inside Dean. Such a funny methodology for transmitting genetic material, he'd always thought, but he was beginning to change his mind. If his orgasm had felt like being caught up in a tidal wave, then the little twitches were like stones shied into the pond of him.

Beneath him, Dean weakly battered the ground with his fist. Judging by the short pumping motions of his hips, he was riding out his own aftershocks. The thick muscles of his back jumped and writhed, each one carved, distinct.

Cas shuddered as he slipped out. Dismayed, he saw blood. He'd torn Dean after all, despite his care. Castiel resolved to begin carrying lubricant in his pocket. He'd think of some explanation. It'd go over poorly, like all his explanations, but the thing about being awkward was eventually, you stopped caring.

A touch of his hand on Dean's buttock and the bites disappeared. The other, unseen damage disappeared as well, but he left the bites on Dean's shoulders alone. Like his palm-print, it warmed him to see them, and Dean would feel them when he put on his shirt or reached for his weapons. It pleased him to think of Dean remembering him. Remembering this. Because if Cas had anything to say about it, and he very much thought he did, this was not a one-off.

At least, that's what he thought until Dean flipped over, and, staring through him with eyes the color shadowed leaves, said flatly, "You wanna disappear. Now."


	5. Chapter 5

VI.

Dean noted sourly that while he should be feeling like three-day roadkill, he instead felt suspiciously like a man who'd been on vacation with all the wholesome organic food and eight-hour nights he could ever want, thus negating the entire purpose of the exercise. Fanfuckingtastic. Thank you, Cas.

So, supernatural-beastie itch scratched. The weird thing was, the whole deal did put him in mind of Anna—backseat Anna, not Terminator Anna. Cas, for all his hardcore growling and snarling, had had that same awestruck light in his eyes right after his orgasm. Dean sneered. If Cas tried to angle for snuggles and soft kisses, well, that wasn't gonna happen. He had a mean itch, not a gay itch. Compartmentalize, that was the key, the distinction that would save his sanity and his self-respect.

He waited until the engine noise of Cas's Cad faded before he stood. The eastern sky was pastel lavender and peach. Sun-up soon, and a day's driving ahead for him and Sammy. As fucked in the head as he was, as ungrateful and puling as he wanted to be about the whole thing, he had to admit it was awful nice of Cas to ensure he didn't ride the whole day on a busted-out ass. Some pains just weren't sexy: low-back strain, infected hangnails, toothaches. Torn assholes? Right up there, man.

He startled himself when he laughed out loud at his own crude thoughts.

Face it, man, he thought, squinting at the sunrise, that did you good. _He_ did you good.

Which was very, very bad.

Only half-jokingly, he scanned the sky for a meteor hurtling down from space to nail Cas's ass some eleven miles down the stick-straight blacktop, because sure as shit, that angel's number was now officially up.

He took out his cell phone as he walked down the hill and sent Cas a short text asking him to call. What happened this morning didn't merit an apology, but he needed to know if Cas could handle this flavor of salt, because his post-sex manners weren't likely to improve with time.

To his amazement, the cell phone rang right away. Dean squinted at the name on the screen and then shrugged. He hadn't considered Cas might turn clingy. That'd be a bitch.

"Cas," he said into the phone.

"Dean," the collected voice of the angel responded, and Dean released a breath he hadn't known he was holding; he guessed part of him had been expecting the voice on the other end to be aspirating blood and wheezing a death rattle. Dude's number was up and all.

"I thought it best to return your call before I reached the base."

Oh, so this was going to be the professional, strictly-business, Holy Tax Accountant version of Cas.

"Alright, man, don't throw a bitch-fit," Dean said. Over the angel's half-articulated, confused mutterings over the description "bitch fit," he said, "What I said before, yeah. You, ah, saw a different side of me and, well, that's just how it is."

"I wish I could say your signal is breaking up, but unfortunately my reception is sterling, so I'm forced to admit that I don't—don't quite understand what that means."

Dean almost see his puzzled squint and head tilt. He grinned. Sometimes Cas just broke him up. The smile was in his voice when he said, "It means I call, you get your ass here, that's what."

Cas sighed in relief. "I thought I'd erred somehow."

Dean glanced around him, but the parking lot was empty and the motel windows were all blank with curtains. He said, pitching his voice a little lower anyway because he was one paranoid sumbitch, "Just between you and me, try jacking off a little, buddy. You felt like you were trying to do that shit by Braille."

"Accurate, considering I couldn't see," Cas said defensively.

What did he want, reassurance? After all that? He didn't need any goddamned reassurance.

"Yeah, well, you get so you can do it in the dark." Dean ended the call. Hell if he was gonna stand around in a motel parking lot playing teenage cell phone games with a friggin' angel of the Lord. Cas got the message, and that was what mattered.

He went inside the room to pack and wake Sammy. He was dying for breakfast.

X

Sammy eyed him over a breakfast omelet loaded with vegetables while Dean tucked into a portion of crispy fried dead pig the size of an offering to a god. He grinned happily as the salt and the grease went straight to his arteries.

"Seems like you feel... better..." Sammy said leadingly.

The Mark still hummed its murder song in his brain, but it had its volume turned down. While he wasn't exactly proud of how he'd gotten there, he'd take it over slaughtering everyone inside the local Wal-Mart.

"All thanks to mindfulness, Sammy. And yoga!" He popped bacon in his mouth and smiled at his brother.

"Oh. So Cas coming over last night, beating your ass, I dreamed that."

Dean choked. Apparently, combinations of certain words and phrases, such as "Cas" and "coming" and "your ass," were no longer okay. He pounded himself on the sternum with the side of his fist.

"Wrong pipe," he wheezed. "Uh, no, uh, you didn't dream that. See, uh, Cas had this idea. A little Fight Club to, uh, keep the Mark happy. Seems to work." He slugged down some coffee to avoid Sam's gaze, hoping his brother wouldn't notice the flush climbing his neck.

Sam did notice, and his eyebrows lowered in suspicion. "So now he's gonna come over every once in awhile and pound you into the pavement—"

This time it was the coffee that went down the wrong pipe.

"Jesus, what is wrong with you?" Sammy rose up out of his seat to whack Dean between the shoulderblades.

"Nothing!" He warded Sammy off with a sharp gesture. "Okay? I admit, it's not the most elegant solution, but it's all we got for now. Buy us some time to kill Abbadon and figure a way to get this shit off my arm."

"Sure, Dean, until you snap and kill him." Sam shook his head. "I mean, does he understand the risk?"

Dean remembered ramming his elbow into Cas's chin. He'd meant that as a killing blow, and it hadn't even slowed him down.

"He can take it," he said, and instantly regretted it. Jerkbrain presented him with the memory of himself and Anna in the backseat of the Impala, only now it was Castiel who gazed at him with luminous eyes as he fitted his hand over the weal on his shoulder.

He cleared his throat and grumbled about damned choking spells for Sammy's benefit, silently informing Jerkbrain that what it was imaging wasn't on the table—hell, it wasn't even in the freaking kitchen—and sureshit he'd never do Cas the way he made Cas do him. So whether he could "take it" or not, nobody cared.

"Dean?"

"What?" Startled out of his reverie, Dean looked up, striving for a matter-of-fact expression. He crunched the remnants of his crispy bacon into bits with the side of his fork.

"You got lost for a second there," Sammy said, looking concerned. "You're not that sure he's safe with you, are you?"

Dean thanked whatever was out there with its ears on he didn't have yet another choking hazard in his mouth just then. "You serious? We're talkin' about the guy who threw the, the Thrash Dean mosh-pit party of Spring 2013, remember that?" He went back to punishing his bacon. "Let Cas worry about Cas."

"Sure, Dean," Sammy said, resigned. "Let's talk about where we're headed next..."


	6. Chapter 6

VII.

Three weeks later, Dean and Sam wrapped up a case in Chicago. Chicago was cold and clammy like a corpse, and the Mark whined louder than ever.

"Man, the monsters in this frickin burg. We really oughta torch this place," Dean said, flexing his fingers. He told himself the wind off the lake had frozen them stiff, but there was no question, he was tense, needing something. If he wasn't thinking about Cas, he was thinking about murder, and he wasn't sure which obsession was worse.

Sammy glanced up at him from where he stood packing his duffel, his forehead crumpled with worry like a big dog. He was dressed to run, but he'd been fiddling around in the room all morning instead.

"Your face freeze that way?" Dean snapped.

Sam hunched his shoulders, hurt, and went back to what he was doing. "Cas called," he said. "Says he has something for us."

"Let'm handle it himself," Dean said, knowing he was being contrary, not caring.

"Well, then, call him to—to Fight Club, or whatever, because you're driving me crazy."

"Problem is, no wings, no Fight Club." Not that Dean had thought about it or anything. Nope. Not at all.

"Then set one up for when we get back! Just—call him! I'm going out." Sam zipped up the duffel and threw it over his shoulder. His hoodie-jacket rode up, revealing the butt of his gun tucked into the waistband of his sweats, secured with an Ace wrap. Dean's anger dissipated a little. Every time Sammy remembered his gun, the world settled a little more rightly on its axis.

"Get your shit packed," Sam tossed over his shoulder. The door snicked shut behind him.

Dean wished there was silence, but there wasn't. There was the whine of the Mark of Cain, getting louder as the echoes faded.

So he turned on his cell phone, then grimaced, half-laughing, "Ewww, Sam. Gross."

Courtesy of Sam, his home screen was now a picture of a giant turd coiled in a toilet bowl. The picture had the intended effect, but since he wasn't about to press that against his ear, he changed it back his old home screen: the demon knife lying slantwise on a table. The Mark's hum spiked at the sight of the weapon, and his palm itched for the First Blade.

Ugly fucking thing that was, fashioned from the jawbone of an ass and darkened by a millenia of blood. You'd think such a jerry-rigged weapon would have to be crap, but it was the finest, most violent piece of equipment he'd ever laid hands on. It felt like sex in his hands, it really did. He missed it. Badly. Too much.

He changed the picture to one of Sam and Bobby. What the hell did he have a knife on his homescreen for, anyway? But he knew what it was: it was a junkie keeping his works around where he could see them, be reassured that bliss was only one burnt spoon away. Awesome. Thanks Cain.

Dean poured himself a drink, thought about turning on the television, thought about taking a shower, but tv shows made the Mark act up and the water pressure in this place? He drooled faster. So he bolted the shot, picked up the phone, and sent a text: "Call me if you can."

No sense, he rationalized, calling Cas if he were busy with some kind of celestial angel bullshit, as he so often was. Dean didn't want a buzzing cell to be the reason Cas's cover was blown, or he got distracted and stabbed with an angel blade, or any of the other thousand ways Cas could die while he wasn't around to prevent it.

Not for the first time, Dean confronted the fact that Cas, a warrior of God, got up to war while he was gone. Cas didn't just sit around painting his toenails, he razed the heavens. It had to get hairy sometimes, and heavy. Cas must have times when he bled, and hurt, and wondered if he'd die. And he went through it alone, because his fellow angels were all still dicks.

Some douchemachine was playing "Toxic."

That douchemachine turned out to be his cell; Sammy'd gotten to his ringtones, too. He jumped on that with a savage quickness, thumbing the call active right when nasal autotuned Britney got to "I'm addicted to—"

"Yeah?"

"You texted me."

Cas. Dean nodded and leaned back against the head board. "Yeah, Sam's all up my ass saying you got something for us. What's the word?"

"Is he there?"

"Nah. You need him? He won't be back awhile," Dean said, shifting on the bed as Cas's voice did things to him he'd rather not examine.

Cas said, "I tried to do what you asked."

Dean drew a blank. "What, get a life?"

"Well, yes, I tried that too—" Dean smiled at the total innocent honesty in Cas's voice, "-unsuccessfully, now that you mention it, but what I was actually referring to was your request that I learn how to masturbate."

"Welcome to eighth grade. How'd it go?"

"Poorly," the angel said, sounding frustrated. Dean cleared his throat to stifle a laugh, because, all awkwardness aside, this was serious business. Dude's been in a vessel for five freaking years, and Jimmy's been off the scene for four of them. Cas had the God-gifted right to get himself off in those rare moments he didn't have to smite the shit out of something.

"So? What's the problem? You could try this thing, s'called the Internet."

"You're the one who wanted me to learn." His voice, tight and low, had a breathy catch in the final words that caught Dean's attention.

He sat up straighter. "Wait. Are you—right now?"

"No, Dean, obviously I'm involved in a multidimensional battle spanning both time and space," Cas said, heavy on the angelic sarcasm. "Why else would I broach this subject now?"

Dean gawped, not that Cas could see him, as he continued pathetically, "It's beginning to chafe."

Dean thumped back against the headboard. Of course. It's not like he'd twigged to the mysteries of chapstick, so of course he'd forgotten the lube. Dean's ears went hot as his body remembered, with a brutal jolt of sensation, that they hadn't used it, either. Suddenly his jeans were in the way. He shucked them off the end of the bed, minding the belt buckle so it didn't clink.

"All right, Cas," he said, "I'm gonna walk you through it, okay?"

"Thank you," Castiel said, with such raw gratitude that Dean dipped his head with a small smile. This was nothing, after all. Just another chapter in Helping Cas Get Human.

"First things first. You're doing this dry, aren't you?"

"I thought that was customary."

"It's not. Go get something slick. Don't use spit." Not following his own advice, Dean gently palmed himself through the soft, worn fabric of his favorite pair of boxers. His semi pulsed warm and friendly. "Soft cloth works, too."

"Is that what you're using?"

Dean hadn't fooled him for a second.

"You standin here invisible?"

Cas's voice throbbed. "Did you forget I have no wings?"

Dean whistled, low. "Someone's frustrated."

"Well, I have _wasted_ the entire morning on this project."

Dean raised his eyebrows. All morning alone in bed with a sophomore handjob technique. No wonder Cas sounded bitchy. "So what's the rush? Gonna be late for work?"

"That's closer than you think," Cas muttered. "Do you want me to do this or don't you?"

"Oh, believe me, you need to do this." Cas could be prickly at the best of times. Dean did not want to even contemplate how he'd be with blue balls. "Now talk to me. How are you doing?"

"I am not erect."

"Hard, Cas," Dean said, rolling his eyes. "First rule of jerking off—don't get clinical. Now relax. Listen to me." Dean cleared his throat. Just explain it, he told himself.

He closed his eyes against the hideous tomato-red-and-tan plaid wallpaper, which had the side effect of bringing the sound of Cas's breathing to the fore of his attention. Cas's breath was quick and light, which was incorrect. Dean needed to hear him rough.

"You know, I haven't been able to keep my hands off myself, thinking about the things you did to me," he said, speaking softly even though he _knew_ no one else could hear him. Still with the paranoia. But it had the pleasant side effect of ramping up the rumble factor, and from the catch in Cas's breathing on the other end of the line, that worked for him.

"What things did I do to you, specifically?" Cas asked, and it was just like fighting with the bastard, throwing a punch just to have him catch it. Once upon a time, Cas's voice hadn't made awkward large boulders tumble in his stomach. Then Cas had served him a righteous beatdown in an alley while booming with the subharmonics of the universe in his voice and all _that_ had changed forever, thanks very much.

And since that was in his head, Dean said, "The way you took me. Those sounds you made..." He slid his palm up his hardening shaft, his head emerging from its sheath, leaving a wet spot on the fabric. He rubbed his thumb over it in tight circles, and made one of those sounds himself.

"What are you doing?" Cas asked, the vibration of stress in his voice a reminder that Dean wasn't here for himself. Cas needed his help.

"The head of your dick is the most sensitive," he said, choosing to not notice the way his voice was jittering all over like he was friggin' twelve again. "Just touch it all over. Run your fingers over the tip. Take your time. Feel it. When it's good, you say so."

Cas panted over the line, and it seemed like one of his problems was sorted, in any event. "It feels good."

"What are you doing?"

"I've got my thumb on the fre—" Cas corrected himself before Dean could, "the, the little ridge—and, um..." Hell, Dean thought, grinning, Cas sounded downright shy, and it was kinda cute. "I'm playing with my slit."

"Yeah, that's good, you're doing fine," he crooned, and he exposed himself through the fly of his old boxers (which wasn't difficult because that button had long since been history) and did the same himself, tight little circles on the frenulum, a little love for the slit, the slick head of his cock all the lubrication he needed. He shuddered a little at the stimulation and let his breath flutter against the phone speaker so Cas would hear him. "Now take your whole head in your fist. Loosely, okay? It's a cock, not a doorknob. Give it a twist."

" _Oh_ ," and then there was nothing from Cas but jagged breathing interspersed with Dean's name and formerly innocent syllables turned into down and dirty whores.

God, hearing him say his name like that did things to him. Precum messed Dean's fist, cooled on his thighs. He said, low and filthy, "You getting wet yet, babe? The thought of you, all slicked up and shining, uhn..." He hardly knew he'd said it; words were coming out without first checking in with his brain. But it was okay so long as it wrung more helpless, stuttered moans from Cas.

Dean imagined Cas's mouth open, loose, ready to be kissed or fucked. He hardly knew which he liked better, only that Cas's mouth was an invitation to sin, especially when he was shocked out of his prim little angel pout and let it fall open, flash of white teeth, red tongue.

Dean reminded himself, again, that this was not for him, that Cas needed him, and he went into his next instruction, because judging by the sounds coming over the line, it was time.

"All right, you're doing fine, Cas, doing so good for me, but now you're going to pump your fist on your shaft. When you get back up to the head, give yourself that twist, or maybe a squeeze. Whatever feels good."

"Yes," Cas said, and that one dragged-out, road-hauled affirmation did something awful to him. His hips came up off the bed and his groan came straight from the pit of his stomach.

 _I'm driving him_ , he thought, power buzzing in his brain. Cas was doing everything he said, right to the letter. He could see it in his mind's eye, Cas on a bed, rumpled and sweaty and flushed red, fucking his fist. It bothered him he couldn't imagine his cock, had to substitute a generic one in his fantasy.

Maybe it was the buzz, maybe it was the fantasy, but he found himself saying, "Next time I get you alone, babe, gonna need you to practice for me. I'm gonna be right there between your knees, watching you. Would you like that?"

"Between my knees, _fuck_ , _yes—"_

His cock turned to iron in his fist, and he quickly squeezed the base to stop his orgasm, stunned by his reaction.

Cas's voice was hot with desire and lost in wonder. So close. They both were. A thousand miles between them, but they were connected by the pressure in their balls, the heat in their bellies, the explosive potential growing.

Dean urged thickly in time to his rapid pumping, "Come on, babe, give it to me. You been saving it for me, I know, but lemme have it now. Come on come on finish for me, need to hear you—"

And Cas, who'd been able to say nothing but "Dean," and "oh," through all this, said, deep and desperate and sincere, "Dean, as many times as you want."

Okay, that did it. He didn't have a prayer. The orgasm tore through him, from the tips of his curled toes to the top of his head, his hips wildly sawing at the ceiling as he made a mess on his hand and stomach and chest and the bedspread, which, to be fair, had probably seen it all before. On the other end of the line Cas was going through something, too, voice a lost and helpless wail. His mouth stretched around the cry, his face twisted, nose scrunched maybe with the force of it, oh God. He should be worried at how that image made him feel, but he was too tingly and post-orgasmic and relieved. The Mark finally, finally shut up as his muscles went soft and his bones turned to butter.

Cas panted, "Ah. Ah."

"Gonna need words at some point," Dean muttered, feeling drowsy now.

"How are humans able to get _anything else done_?" is what the angel eventually came out with, and Dean wasn't feeling tired anymore because he was laughing too hard.

"Eighth grade is a pretty goddamned unproductive year," he said, when he could.

Cas made no response, but he also didn't hang up, so Dean used his shirt to clean up the mess as best he could and then wriggled beneath the bedspread (which he really did feel bad about; it wouldn't have killed him to grab a sock or something), the phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. He listened as Cas's breathing gentled and slowed and smoothed, and he wondered if they were going to go to sleep like this, listening to each other.

And that was when the panic, which had been asleep all this time while Dean thought shmoopy thoughts about Cas and imagined Cas in passionate, flushed ways, suddenly woke up, grabbed control of his hand like it had a Mark all its own, turned off the phone, and threw it across the room.


	7. Chapter 7

VII.

Sam and Dean dealt with Castiel's prisoner, a trusting little dork like every angel ever. The whole time, Dean had a semi that just wouldn't quit, all thanks to the fact that he was in the same building—hell, the same zip code—as Cas. God, he was pathetic.

He hadn't talked to Cas since... that... though he kept flashing back on the memory at inconvenient times, blood rushing to his groin and away from his brain, which was unfortunate when he needed it because he had a ghost at his throat and Sammy unconscious in the corner, or when he had some nerd chained to a chair and the Mark singing "Cherry Pie" at the prospect of delicious torture. He let Sam take the lead, and he was grateful his brother was up to it.

Sam's brilliant interrogation technique had the prisoner singing like a canary.

They talked over what they'd learned while they walked out, but Dean's mind was partitioned like a crazy man's, one part following what Sam was saying, another part marvelling over what Cas had built from nothing—yet again—and yet another part muttering, low and deep, about _He never told me this,_ and _How long has he been working this?_ and _How can I get him alone?_

Dean sneered at his ability to reduce celestial civil warfare down to the most basic principles of its general and his dick, but the edge of self-contempt in his thoughts didn't make the slightest headway into changing what he wanted, even as he scrambled to justify it to himself. Cas would be able to focus better if he weren't a jagged bundle of nerves, right? And same went for him; his brain would work better without the Mark of the Satanic Mosquito whining and whining without any respite. So getting Cas alone was for a good cause, all about saving people—or, in this case angels, who were all suicide cases anyway, but Cas seemed to think they were important.

That bullshit didn't clear even Dean's admittedly low bar, like it mattered. He was damned anyway.

After Sammy finished debriefing Cas, he clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Cas'll give me a ride back to the bunker."

Sam stared at him. "Fight Club?" he asked, his voice bland.

Sammy had returned from his run to a smelly room and Dean's cell phone in the far corner with the last call from Cas. It didn't take a hundred and forty IQ to work out what had happened. He was, so far, keeping his suspicions to himself, but Dean could _feel_ him wanting to talk about it. He wanted to talk about it now, but he'd stopped him from drawing blood and the Mark was singing and so. Yeah. Not happening.

"I'll see you," he said, spinning his brother and giving him a gentle shove down Cas's ultra-secret Saturday Morning Cartoon good-guy base of operations. Like, seriously. When the fuck had this happened? And then Dean walked through the door to Cas's office.

Cas turned from one of his monitors, withdrawn, face clotted by all his important thoughts and feelings, about which Dean did not care as he hurtled towards him like a stone streaking fire through Earth's atmosphere, a plummet only checked when Cas's back slammed against the wall with a force that rattled the maps. As Dean rammed his tongue between his lips, he thought, _He shoulda stopped me._

But Cas opened for him. Dean sighed into his mouth, unaware until just that moment how much he fucking _needed_ this, for Cas to give it up to him, his tongue clean and wet, his mouth a potential space. In that moment of surrender, nothing else mattered.

"You hung up on me," Cas said, when Dean broke for air.

"Yeah, I did," Dean said, staring at his lips, the flash of teeth and ripple of tongue behind them, and he bent to them again. His cock pulsed heavy and painful behind his zipper.

Cas tore his mouth away and lowered his chin, glaring at him beneath lowered brows, through sharp eyelashes. Dean instinctively took a step back.

"Unless there are different rules at play for telephonic intercourse, I believe that was rude."

"Did it hurt your baby feelings?"

"I think it calls for correction."

"Oooh," Dean said, swiveling his shoulders campily, mocking both himself and Cas and the whole damned situation and most of all, the voice in his head screaming, _Since when are you so gay for this?_ "Sounds saucy."

If he'd been sincere, Cas might have smiled, but instead his glare took a level in intensity, angel grace glinting violet within all that cobalt blue.

 _He_ , Dean thought, as Cas flinched across the small space separating them, _is not_ , he thought as Cas grabbed his wrists and forced them behind his back, _human_ , he thought as Cas bound him, with what he did not know, but it burned like acid as Cas bent him over the desk, Cas's erection pressed against him, his own lust nagging louder than even the Mark.

Teasing a seraph was a terrible idea.

He knew this as Cas brought his lips to his ear, skimming the stiff upper edge in ways that made him twitch and writhe as the angel rumbled, "You saw just one of our dungeons. You know we have more."

X

Which is how Dean found himself bound wrist and ankles inside an angel-warded cell, Cas prowling around the perimeter, in the dark where he couldn't see him.

He flinched, couldn't help himself, as the angel blade began tearing through his shirt.

"Let me explain the rules," Cas said against his ear as he broke out in goosebumps. "Every time," he said, as he tattered Dean's third-favorite shirt into so many dust rags, "you want me," and there went Dean's undershirt, the angel blade a hot line against his spine—Cas wasn't being too careful, and the edge of the holy weapon stung, "to stop what I'm doing," his belt whisked away into the darkness to slap against an unseen wall, "you are going to have to," _Shhsk shhsk_ went the angel blade, up one denim leg and then the other, "ask for a kiss," and the pants were gone, along with his boxers.

Dean stood chained and naked except for his socks and boots, the erection drooling stiff and upright against his belly a complete embarrassment. He wanted to be sure he had this completely right.

"To stop you, you want me to ask for a kiss?" He flushed until he felt sunburned from the tips of his ears to his navel.

Cas shrugged, too much shoulder, an exaggerated imitation of a human frown. "If you want me to stop what I'm doing to you, yes," he said. "I've learned these are the rules for this sort of game."

"My safe word is 'Nickelback,'" Dean said, smiling sarcastically.

"I don't care what your safe word is," Cas snarled, and fuck his life, if he weren't supported by chains, that would have put him on his knees. Cas pressed in, his breath hot and floral-sweet on Dean's mouth as he growled, "I told you what you have to do."

"All right, Cas," Dean said, giving him a completely human shrug of his own. "If that floats your boat, get to it. I've been tortured by experts."

The Mark seemed to like the idea, but he did not. Having Cas beat the shit out of him was one thing, a kind of acceptable violence. Like a really brutal hug, it acknowledged his existence, gave him a chance to fight back, even if he didn't take it. This, though? Would be a dismantling, Cas slicing him up, reducing him to an object that bleeds and whimpers and, apparently, begs for kisses. Dean felt something break inside him at the thought.

Cas looked broken, too, but he shuttered his expression so quickly Dean thought he might have imagined it. "You think I want to hurt you?" he asked. "Far from it, my friend."

Friend. That word stung like the edge of the angel blade, but he put it aside. Of course, Cas wouldn't understand the _meaning_ behind what they'd been up to, and that was for the best.

Cas walked behind him, and as soon as he was out of Dean's sight, Dean tensed up. Being bound like this brought up too many bad memories. His heart tripped and staggered as his stomach roiled. The edges of his vision flickered red. Screams cut in and out of static. He was used to his flashbacks by now, but they soured things, like a bad headache.

Then he felt Cas's fingers on his neck, on his shoulders, petting, denting into his tight muscles. "Relax," Cas said in his ear. "You're with me. I've got you."

What?

Cas ran his palms over his trapezius muscles, draped his long fingers over so the tips could read his collarbone, his palms flexing, bringing warmth and blood to the wired muscles.

Cas had chained him up so he could—give him a massage?

"This is bullshit, Cas," he ground out.

"Shut up," Cas said mildly. He ran his thumbs up the channel of Dean's neck towards his scalp, and the tingling sensation of old knots getting plowed made Dean slump in his chains and groan with a heretofore unknown pleasure. Cas cupped the back of his head as it lolled, rubbing at his scalp, joy bursting through him in little tingling fairy gusts.

This was stupid. There was no reason to chain him up in a dungeon just for this. What a waste of time. Cas had a war to coordinate, Dean had Abaddon to hunt; nobody had time for freakin' massages.

"Kiss me," he said, his voice rough with impatience.

"What's wrong?" Cas asked.

"This is pointless," Dean said. "You wanna rub my back, drop by the bunker sometime. I'll mix you a friggin' cocktail to sip while you do it."

"You know you'd never let me," Cas said, and Dean had to admit, that was fair.

Cas slipped around to face him, his blue eyes clear and serious, and Dean twitched inside his chains with the urge to wrap his arms around him. Cas tipped his chin up with two fingers and ghosted the softest kiss Dean had ever had over his mouth. It was chaste but it lit his veins on fire, and Dean thrust against him, baffled by layers of overcoat and belt and slacks and whatever else.

"Too many clothes, Cas," he said.

"It's going to stay that way," Cas said.

"Why?" Dean demanded, needy as a child. Cas only smiled in response.

He traced the muscles of Dean's torso with the tips of his fingers, going under the pectorals, down the sternum in a holy cross, his fingers a cool knife edge down the line in the center of Dean's abs, blessing him. The angel's grace tingled in his touch, or maybe that was just Dean's blood, crying out for that hand to go lower. His erection, which had slumped a little in his confusion, perked up now at the hope of some real action, but Cas, infuriatingly, ignored it, choosing instead to trace the lines of his hipbones around his flanks, up to his ribs, bumping over raised scars from knives and teeth and what the hell else he didn't even know. Cas touched those white, puckered lines as though he'd like to erase them.

"Kiss me," Dean growled.

Cas's head snapped up with a righteous glare. "What is it now?" he said, eyes burning blue, and Dean felt a flash of guilt at interrupting him, because it seemed he'd been enjoying that.

"You know what I look like; hell, you built it," Dean said. "You don't need to fucking Braille me."

"I love touching you," Cas said.

"What the _fuck_?" Dean said, because that was the only rational response to such an asinine statement, but Cas caught the final word in his mouth as he sealed his lips with his own, drove his tongue inside, the exact opposite of the first kiss.

After it lasted a thousand years, Cas broke away to stare down his body. Dean, staring at his eyes, expected the desire, but he didn't expect the _worship._ It made him feel young and stupid and clumsy and unworthy. Totally uncalled-for tears stung his eyes.

"It's _mine,_ " Castiel said, and Dean gasped. "Close your eyes," he commanded, and Dean obeyed.

Something wet and hot touched his left shoulder, where Cas's handprint once shone before he healed him back in all that Apocalyptic mayhem. The tip of Cas's tongue traced where those fingerprinted weals used to puff, red and bragging. His saliva on Dean's skin cooled like the touch of a spirit.

Something weird begin to happen, and with the weirdness came fear. It was like Dean separated from himself, began to float, so he could see Cas loving him with his mouth. Cas's tongue was on the line of his collarbone now, moving over to the other shoulder, but Cas got distracted by his neck and sucked a hickie up there, which made his cock bump against his stomach in excitement. Because there was still excitement, but it was distant, not the driving, murderous force it had been. This was almost peaceful. Scary, but peaceful.

"Kiss me," he whispered, his voice wavering, and he thought, _Oh shit I'm about to burst into tears_.

Cas didn't ask this time, just moved up from his neck to slip his tongue between Dean's lips, as gentle as going to sleep. Dean sucked at it greedily, needing to come back down to Earth, to find some connection to his own body.

"I don't deserve this," he said when Cas turned him loose.

"You deserve everything," Cas said against his mouth.

Dean did cry then, tears spilling out beneath his closed lashes, but he was still hovering and could see them, sluicing down his cheeks in bright lines. Cas's tongue accepted them, lapped them up, his lips pressing little kisses on his cheeks. Because this was a holy being standing in front of him. This was a creature one step removed from the Father Himself. And Dean? Was a profanity. Not far from demonic. Like, he could go pick up a six-pack from the neighborhood Hellmart. He _did not deserve this_ and _it hurt like hell_ to accept it.

This was the most brutal torture he had ever been through.

Cas didn't move away from his mouth, as though hearing his thoughts, which perhaps he could. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Dean's waist, pressed against him, not caring if Dean's drooling cock stained his slacks, his own long-neglected erection pressed hot and strong against Dean's stomach. He kissed Dean's neck, found Dean's earlobe, sucked it in, and Dean's breath shattered against his shoulder as he collapsed, supported by chains etched with spellwork and Cas's arms.

Then Cas turned him loose. He whimpered, loathing himself even as the lost little sad sound escaped him, missing the warmth, the envelopment, the feeling of being home.

Cas went to his knees.

And, okay, so, this was very sweet, and Dean could appreciate what Cas was trying to do, but Cas on his knees? Goddamn. Hot.

Cas looked up at him from that position, his brow crumpled, his eyes smoking hot and blue, and madness danced not too far beneath the surface, like Cas could hardly hold himself back. That was damned hot, too.

Holding his eyes, Cas licked Dean's hard-on from root to tip.

" _Cas,"_ Dean groaned, the vowel spinning around a pole, the sibilant strung out the length of the Transatlantic cable, the whole syllable a century's worth of speaking. as Cas took the head of his cock into his mouth.

Oh God, oh his God, if He had His ears on He could damn well listen to this shit, Cas's mouth was hot and wet, his throat was tight and pulsing, oh God, it was like nothing he'd ever felt _oh God help him_ he was lost.

Pretty much like the handjob, Cas had no idea what he was doing, but unlike a handjob, enthusiasm made up for a lot. He wanted to _drink_ Dean, and that came through loud and clear as Cas did his best to swallow every inch, and Dean didn't need a ruler to know he had an impressive amount of inches.

"Cas, you gotta listen to me now," he said, because yeah, he was the one in chains, but he was also the one in this compromising position. "No teeth, okay?"

Cas hummed an affirmative sound deep inside his throat, which was, coincidentally, exactly where Dean was at the moment, and he moaned and bucked, even though it was totally rude.

Cas, he realized after a few minutes, didn't really need to breathe.

Cas, he realized after maybe one minute more, was fucking talented at this.

Cas, he realized as he came down his throat with a strangled scream, was born to do this.

"Cas!" It ricocheted off the walls of the dungeon as Dean came. He wasn't sure if he was having some kind of girly multiple-orgasm experience, or if he was just coming _really fucking hard_ , but it was intense, whatever it was. Even as he was sure the spasms were about to stop and he'd live through it after all, Cas would do _something—_ seriously _, what_ —with his throat and there'd be another wave, melting his bones, his brain, his veins, everything turning to light and disappearing down inside the angel.

As Dean came, he believed. Cas had salvaged his soul from Hell. Cas had rebuilt him. Cas knew him. Cas had made him a part of himself, and he imagined his seed like dark demon smoke coiling inside all that bright grace, imagery that threatened to depress him until Cas's blue eyes flicked up beneath the black slashes of his eyebrows and the heat in their depths burned it out of his head.

And when it was all over, there was Cas, kneeling between his feet, a softening cock between his lips, which were every bit as hot as Dean had ever hoped they'd be wrapped around him like that. Dean had double vision, so there were two of Cas smiling up at him, and shit, that was a fantasy he really hadn't needed but it was there and he was stuck with it.

Cas released his cock and slid up his body. He popped open the first shackle on his left wrist.

"It really seems you hated that," he said, with a smug, self-satisfied smile.

"Kiss me," Dean said, because the only alternative was punching him.

He tasted himself, salty and bitter, in Cas's mouth when Cas obeyed, and that was the only reason why, later, he believed he hadn't dreamed the whole thing.


	8. Chapter 8

IX.

Dean and Sam reported to Cas's super-secret Saturday Morning Cartoon Good-Guy base of operations—one hell of a clunky name, but it had stuck—to continue investigating the angel who'd disintegrated with an earth-shattering kaboom in an ice cream parlor. Just another Wednesday.

The base was crammed with angels. Angels who weren't Cas gave Dean the crawling creeps. Particularly the brunette with the cheekbones who seemed stuck to Cas's shoe, hanging off his shoulders like she wanted to replace his missing wings.

When they learned an angel named Josiah had missed roll call, Sam's priceless response was: "You have a roll call?"

Cas looked a little embarrassed. "They like to hear me say their names."

"I bet they do," Dean muttered, jealousy flicking to life like a butane lighter as he stared at Hannah. Hannah seemed to share the sentiment, if her sharp glance was anything to go by.

She called Cas "Commander," and "sir," and worse, he seemed to like it. Dean tried to joke his way through it, but the fact of the matter was, this pissed him off. He kept his eye on her, tried to silently stake his territory. She was an angel, though, so of course she missed it; if anything, she crept in even closer.

The Mark had some things to say about that. Dean tensed, his hands twitching.

Sam eyed him. Low, he said, "You wanna maybe try to talk to him? I mean, before you explode?"

Dean shot him a glance which said, "What? Hell, no."

"Well, too bad, cos you're gonna," Sam said. "Hannah! Is this your guy?"

Hannah trotted over to Sam's side, obedient as a spaniel. Friggin' angels. Sam directed her attention to his laptop and shot Dean a glance over her bent back: "Any time now," his raised eyebrows said.

Oh, fine.

"Cas," Dean said, but Cas was already by his side, his hand on his elbow. He glanced down at the grip with his eyebrows raised, then met Cas's eyes. Cas looked stern, one eyebrow raised.

"Dean. Come with me."

Dean took a moment to appreciate Cas's command of the situation. Externally, it looked like the general taking one of his captains into a confidential meeting. Internally, of course, it was nothing but memories of Cas kneeling at his feet, shackles around his wrists, starlight shining off wet skin. Cas's fingers flexed on his arm, his sidelong glance intense.

As soon as the door to the office closed, Cas pressed him up against it. Dean's breath huffed out in a gasp.

"I brought you in here to warn you. Quit planning the murder of my lieutenant," Cas said, practically in his ear, his breath washing over the sensitive skin of his neck.

"Lieutenant?" Dean said, ignoring the shudder of sensation that sent down his spine. "You mean wife."

Cas drew back, blank, puzzled. "Wife?"

"She wants it," Dean said.

As though speaking to a mental defective, Cas said, "Hannah is an angel."

"Buddy, I'm telling you, she might be an angel, but she's dressed in a woman, and that woman wants it," Dean said. He raised his hands. "I'm just spittin' facts, here."

"So what if you are?" Cas pushed away from him and paced to the center of the room, then turned to face him. "That sort of thing requires my cooperation."

"And you wouldn't?" Dean straightened up from his slump against the door, his heart beating faster, though he didn't interrogate the reason why.

"Why would I?" Cas glared, his eyes dark blue. "What could she possibly offer me besides her service?"

Dean snorted. "Her service. Are you hearing yourself right now?"

Cas stepped into his space again, twisting his face up to his, still glaring. His body heat burned Dean through the layers of their clothes. His breath smelled of flowers. "I am not deaf, Dean," he said, "so yes, I do 'hear' myself. What I don't hear? Is you explaining what exactly your issue is. This is a crisis situation, and you are on the edge of violence against my best soldier. Either explain yourself, or remove yourself. You have no other options."

Castiel did not give Dean an inch. The Mark made it so Dean could not control himself, so Cas had to. If he couldn't get Dean to figure out what his problem was, he'd be unable to trust him around his lieutenant. While that wasn't an insurmountable obstacle, it was certainly the kind of thing he needed to know before he turned Dean loose amongst his people.

His responsibility to them was as important as his responsibility to Dean. He couldn't allow whatever was going on to fester. So he pressed Dean against the door, just as he had back at the motel, ignoring his own inevitable response to the hunter's heat, to the scent of his skin.

Ever since he'd had Dean down in the angel dungeon, the thought of him had been a disturbance and a distraction. It all boiled down to salt: the salt of Dean's tears on his tongue, the salt of Dean's ejaculate in the back of his throat. Salt, that banished ghosts and warded off demons. Salt, the mineral which made up the bones of the earth. Cas craved the flavor, and his eyes dropped, without his volition, to Dean's mouth, slightly open, his quick breath hot against his lips.

Dean broke. His eyes stuttered to the floor, green as leaves, long blond lashes catching the overhead fluorescent lights. He licked his lips, his erection like the butt of a gun against Cas's hip, and Cas was beggared by Dean's response to him. An ache shot through him, close to pain, and all his good intentions of protecting Hannah faded like a sigil-banished angel.

His only hope was to follow up on Dean's vulnerability. So he said, voice hard with a sternness he did not actually feel, "Hannah, Dean. Explain. What is the problem?"

Dean bit his lower lip, and Cas remembered the way he had arched beneath him and howled when his teeth broke his skin. Sweat on Dean's temples, bouncing light like frost.

"Is it that you think I'll respond?" Cas, pressed against him, couldn't understand how Dean could mistake this. Dean was the only being he was interested in. How else could he prove that to him? He'd betrayed Heaven for his sake. He'd died for him, more than once. But Dean's self-hatred would not allow him to believe that someone could sacrifice himself so totally, and Cas could not find a way through it.

Suddenly exhausted, he pressed his forehead against Dean's, tasted Dean's breath, coffee and whiskey and Dean. "You are very stupid sometimes," he said. "You think she's the one I want?"

An idea occurred to him, spurred by the memories of Dean writhing beneath him on a rocky outcropping outside yet another crappy roadside motel, and Cas didn't stare at the idea too long, frightened it would evaporate like a road mirage.

"Is that what you think?" he asked, stabbing the question into Dean like an angel blade, not missing the other man's wince as it hit home. He cupped Dean through the hard denim of his jeans, his palm reading the long length of the other man's shaft along his thigh, rubbing it. Dean gasped and bucked into the pressure.

"Put your hand on me," he said against Dean's mouth.

Dean obeyed with an alacrity that almost sent Cas to his knees. It wasn't just the feeling of Dean's fingers rolling across his hard-on, though that lit him up, went all through him; it was the eagerness with which he'd followed the order, and Cas realized just how much power he had in this situation.

All of it.

Cas was no stranger to command. He'd sent armies across the span of the universe to fight for the flag of Heaven. He'd led units against archangels. But this? This was the most intense feeling of power he'd ever experienced. This hunter, who'd defeated the Apocalypse, palmed him through the thin fabric of his slacks just because he'd told him to.

At the same time, Cas was too aware of the history behind Dean's actions. Obeying men because he had to, for survival. There was an edge of ice in Dean's green eyes, a hardness which said he felt that history too, whether he wanted to face it or not.

So Cas surged forward and took Dean's mouth, thrust his tongue inside, tasting him, trying to claim him. By mingling their breath, he hoped Dean would know that this was for his own sake, that Cas was only trying to tell him, clumsy and wordless as it had to be, that he, Castiel, Angel of the Lord, was looking after him, Dean Winchester, hero and victim of an absent God.

There was a word, a phrase, that encapsulated this, and Cas couldn't pretend he didn't know it. Still, he was terrified to say it. If he did, and Dean didn't answer, it wouldn't be the end of their friendship; Dean needed him too much, and he knew that. It would, however, be one more weight on the man's shoulders, dragging him down to darkness. If Cas said "I love you," and he'd read this wrong, which he so easily could have, then he'd just piled another sandbag onto Dean's wish to die. He couldn't take that risk, so he held his silence.

Instead, he drank Dean in, analyzed his flavor with senses amped by stolen grace. Enzymes, hormones, blood, chemicals, minerals: the molecules of Dean's life, his moment-by-moment existence. This human body was only a fragile balance of chemical reactions. One day, some critical number would dip or rise, and Dean would simply stop. This body would grow cold. This soul would fly free.

He couldn't stand it. He drove him against the door and Dean grunted, ground the palm of his hand against Cas's cock, his fingertips fumbling on his zipper, but Cas couldn't leave room for him to pull it down. The barest amount of space between their bodies could be the gap through which Death could enter. Dean's breath whisked down his throat and Cas gave it back to him. He breathed for him.

He tore his mouth free from Dean's to whisper in his ear, his voice a husk he didn't recognize, "I want your mouth on me."

Dean's eyes flew open wide, a moan unfurling like the new leaf of a fern. Apparently that had been the right command. He dropped, pulled Cas's zipper down, fumbled at the strange human undergarments Cas wore because humans did, and in moments cool air enveloped Cas's cock. And there was Dean, on his knees, staring, not up at Cas's eyes—which, to be honest, he'd expected, because Dean's gaze often snagged on his eyes like a fish on a hook—but at his penis, hugely erect, red with blood and hard as stone. Dean's eyes crossed in their intense focus, and Cas had to strangle back something that might have been a laugh.

Dean wrapped his lips around Cas's cock, and now he looked up, the pupils of his shade-green eyes yawning black and enormous. And at that contact, Cas's heart slammed against his ribs, a jolt of fire shot down his spine to the root of his cock, his testicles tight against the base of his stomach, a hurdle approaching fast. He braced himself against the door jamb, all his muscles wired tight against it. How did humans stand this?

He imagined the intricacies of Heaven, the fractal worlds created by bloodlines intersecting, each soul encased in its own capsule but close to those of their blood, and then the strange connections created by unrelated souls who were, by some mathematical sorcery, exactly mated. His orgasm paced back enough to allow him to feel the wet heat of Dean's mouth, the skill with which his tongue worked him.

That had been close.

And Dean was good. Cas had no basis for comparison, but he didn't need one to judge quality when it was happening to him. Again, there was that hint of corruption, that snake in the garden of his pleasure, but Cas almost loved it, because it helped him hold off enough to really experience this, and who knew when he'd have another chance?

But still. His pleasure be damned, he couldn't let Dean work him like he did those others. It was fine when he played that role for Dean, because he needed it, but not now.

"Dean," he said, and his own voice shocked him, wrung out and baseless, almost a whine; "Dean, thank you."

Dean's eyes, still on his, looked shocked, then injured, and Cas groaned deep inside. He'd tried to help, and look what happened. Of course it had gone bad, because it always did.

"Come back," Cas said, because he couldn't stand that expression a moment more, and Dean rose. The warm air in this room felt cool on his head, wet with Dean's spit and his own excitement.

He kissed him, his hands busy on Dean's belt, the button of Dean's jeans, Dean's zipper, needing all this cloth between them gone, and Dean helped. Their hands clashed and argued at his waistband as they mutually struggled, and soon enough they were naked, facing each other, breathing hard, and.

This was the first time he'd really seen Dean naked. Cas took his time, watched the way his skin flushed so every freckle darkened, the wrap of his muscles over his ribs and shoulders, strong, alive. His hands, loose at his hips, the fingertips roughened with calluses that Cas had felt on his skin already. He wanted to kiss them, and he would.

"You're beautiful, Dean," he said, and Dean's face contorted at the compliment. It looked at first as though he'd reject it, but then he grinned bashfully at the floor, the tips of his ears glowing red.

He looked up at him through his lashes without raising his head. "So are you," he said, hoarse.

Cas knew what he would have to do for Dean, and he was excited for it, and frightened, both. From the pocket of his trench, he produced the small bottle of KY he'd taken to carrying around, which had generated exactly as many awkward conversations as he'd expected it would. Holding Dean's eyes, made fierce by lust, he slapped the bottle, warmed by his body heat, into Dean's palm.

"This is something Hannah cannot do," he said.

"Cas, man—" Dean stared down at the bottle as though he'd handed him a demon bomb. "I, uh, man, this is huge. I never—I just never, okay?"

"Right," Cas said, so firmly that Dean's head snapped up and his eyes met his. There was so much terror in them that Cas almost had second thoughts, but in his bones, he knew this course of action was correct. This -was- something Hannah could not do, not without some accoutrements and rather more instruction than Cas felt like giving. And he knew damned well this was Dean's first time in this position, and that was all to the good, too. "That's the point."

Dean goggled at him. "Cas. This is. Like, this is a serious line, you know? I can't just pirouette across it. I mean, warn a guy."

Cas stepped into his space the way he'd done a hundred times before, with Dean holding the bottle away from both their bodies as though he'd like to toss it. Their cocks bumped together, and whatever was coming out of Dean's mouth, his erection had not drooped one bit. He moaned softly at the contact and twisted into it, reached down between them to wrap his hand around them both, and Cas knew his game. Distract Cas from this course of action. Do this instead.

"This is what I'm asking of you, Dean," he said against Dean's mouth, and then snatched a kiss because he couldn't help himself, his hands on Dean's lower back, rubbing the tight muscles. Dean carried so much tension in his body. One day he'd like to get him on his stomach and really work it all out.

Dean's moans came louder now, more fluid, as his control over himself unravelled. Their slick cocks in his tight fist, because Cas couldn't bring himself to put a stop to that, but he continued persuading Dean with his hands, his mouth, arguing silently for what he knew had to happen.

Dean broke away to plead one final time, his voice breaking, his eyes wild: "Cas, I'm not safe, man. I don't know how I'm going to do—I mean, I could really hurt you."

"You're forgetting," Castiel said, kissing him more deeply, because those moans sounded delicious, "that I am," another kiss, and somehow Cas found his hands in Dean's hair, holding him against his mouth so he could go deeper, dark blonde strands as soft as kitten fur, "an angel, you dunce."

Dean stopped; his fist stopped, his body stopped. He eyed him. "Did you just call me a dunce?"

"Just calling it like I see it," Cas said, using a phrase he'd heard Sam say once, and Dean broke out in a delighted smile.

"All right," he said. "Just you, though. Just you."

It sounded as though he were convincing himself, which he probably was, but the words pierced Cas deep inside his grace, where nothing had ever touched him before. "Just me. Yes. That's what I want."

"Okay." Dean rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck. "So. Um. Bend for the soap?" He rolled his eyes at himself even as the words came out of his mouth.

"Shut up, Dean," Cas said, assuming control again. Just because Dean was going to enter him did not mean he was running this operation. Cas knew exactly how messed up that idea would get, and with what speed. He went down on all fours on the floor, and judging from the shattered noise Dean made, that was the right move.

Dean knelt behind him, his skin shedding incandescent heat, and Cas dipped his head as Dean kissed down the back of his neck, down the middle of his shoulder blades. He knew the Mark had to be giving him hell, but Dean was gentle, so gentle that Cas knew he was still afraid of himself, afraid of this, afraid of everything. The only other alternative was to goad him into throwing him around the room, and Cas didn't want that for him. Too traumatic. Too much like every other thing that had ever happened to the man.

Dean's long fingers, quaking like aspen leaves, wrapped around his neck, petted his Adam's apple, urged his face upwards so Dean could kiss him, draped over his back like his long-gone wings. Hot like those wings had been, and the memory of them, missing them, made Cas cry out into Dean's mouth. Dean took that cry into himself, and maybe he understood the reason for it and maybe he didn't, but his kiss was so soft and gentle that Cas could hope that he did.

Dean bit a little at his lips, and then Cas felt warm, slick fingers press between his cheeks, touching him, slicking him up. Dean started to say something, I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-this-is-a-bad-idea Winchester blather, but Cas shushed him. "Feels good," he groaned. "Sensitive."

"Yeah, I know," Dean said, nuzzling his neck, biting his ear. "So fucking scared, Cas."

"Nothing to be scared of," Castiel said. "I'm safe."

Dean let out a little, lost noise.

That thing Cas had been too frightened to say beat against his gritted teeth as Dean pushed a finger inside him, beat harder when Dean thrust his hard-on against Cas's hip at the tight clench of his muscles around him. "So hot, Cas," he whispered. "So tight."

Cas couldn't help it; he whined at those words, pushed back against Dean's finger, which was did something inside him that made his thighs shake. Cas was well aware of the anatomy, but he remembered Dean's advice—don't get clinical—so he focused on the deep well of sensation coming from inside him, bursting into glittering shocks all down his nerves.

The bottle made a rude noise as Dean applied more lube to his fingers and now there was a second one, thrusting inside him, setting up a rhythm in time to Dean's huffed grunts. The sensations were deepening, swelling, more intense than Cas had ever thought possible, and he came back around to hear his own helpless noises and say, "You were holding out on me. This is. This is incredible, Dean."

Dean chuckled. "Bout to get more so," he said. "You're ready."

Cas might have felt annoyed that Dean had gone ahead and taken control anyway, but he was too lost to be snippy about it. Maintaining command when earthquakes were happening was apparently more difficult than he'd imagined.

Dean's hand on his hip, the other positioning himself, and Cas felt a flash of fear as Dean's big cock entered him. His ass was an expanding ring of pain that had him biting his lip and staring down at the floor.

"Breathe through it, baby," Dean urged him, his shaking voice low and hoarse in his ear. "Relax. Relax. Let me in, you can do this, c'mon. Yes, like that, that's goo... oh God, Cas. Cas!"

He was hilted, all the way in, his cock hot and enormous. The pain had simply vanished like a magic trick—now you're hurting, now you're not—replaced by fullness and ecstasy. Cas was dully aware of his own penis bumping against his stomach, printing sticky stamps against his skin, as Dean slid back aways, and then forward again, slow and careful, making certain Cas had adapted to him.

"Talk to me. You in pain?"

"So fucking far from it," Cas said, and Dean cried out in lustful agony when he cursed, as he'd known he would. So many years ahead for them both, Cas talking dirty to him from the backseat of the Impala while Sam slept in the passenger seat, Cas sending him text commands for Dean to follow, Dean's thoughts dwelling on him all day long until he saw him again and could show him he'd obeyed; all of that. Yes. But right now, the spiral, carrying him upwards, his spine a conduit for every bit of the bliss he'd watched from Heaven, one eyebrow raised, confused, curious, but ultimately distant.

Not now. This was as close as he could get without actually drawing Dean inside him, though that was a pleasant thought. Dean, safe, at last.

"Fuck me, Dean," he ordered, and Dean cried out again, the unravelled spool of sound consolidating in a gritted, "Fuck, yes."

Dean's hand slipped around his cock and matched his rhythm, stripping him down, and altogether it was too much to bear. Cas tried to warn him, but all that came out was wreckage, and then he tipped over the edge and his voice stopped working altogether. From his center came the tidal waves, harsh crashing things that peaked and then ebbed but didn't stop, washing through his body, tumbling him, rocking him with their power. Through blurry vision he saw his ejaculate arcing across the floor, white spatters shooting four feet ahead, and through the roaring in his ears, he heard his own mangled cries.

Then Dean roared, "Oh God, baby, that's gorgeous," and spent himself, pounding Cas on his shoulder with the side of his fist, and if Cas were human, he'd have bruises. Dean's shout of utter pleasure rang off the walls of the office and Cas grinned, huge and unashamed, to have been the cause.

"We have made one hell of a mess," Dean solemnly proclaimed afterward. His chest was sticky with sweat beneath Cas's cheek, and the low rumble of his voice seemed to come from somewhere down in his stomach.

"I like the mess," Cas said.

"Your head still ringing?"

"I like the ringing."

"Baby, you like everything."

"Right now? Yes. Yes, I like everything, very much." Cas sucked a kiss onto Dean's chest.

"Well, prepare for hatred, because I think I hear your angel army charging up the stairs to save you," Dean said, suddenly tense beneath him.

"Sam'll stop them," Cas said, too lazy with bliss to care much, and Dean pounded the floor and groaned, "Oh my fucking God no, I forgot all about Sammy!"

Laughing, they disentangled themselves and started gathering up their clothes.

END


End file.
